“Don’t use the elevator on the left,” Rauf said, “You won’t like it because it goes to the top floor and stops at each floor on the way down for 30-40 seconds.”
I didn’t know the purpose of that but didn’t say anything because it seemed like something I should know or have inferred. I knew it was something Jewish and figured there must be a reason for it. It was only a day later I found myself in the Shabbat elevator and noted that it worked just fine and wondered what the hell Rauf was talking about. It was on the last day, conveniently enough, Shabbat, that it became clear, and only after one of the Gentiles pushed a button for a floor in the Shabbat elevator in the presence of an observant Jew. That was against the rules.
Pushing the button represented effort, which represented work, which was against the rules, rules that applied to everyone seemed to be the case as the guilty floor button pusher was quickly apprised of his oversight, within seconds of depressing the circular plastic disc an eighth of an inch. I thought it emblematic of the cultural divide between peoples, a divide as stark as the thirty-foot wall around Jerusalem, a wall that does work, not surprisingly, in keeping some people out that other people do not want in.
For the Jewish Israelites, the land of Canaan was given to them by God, as it was written, but then they were exiled in the 8th century BC after which it pretty much was Palestinian until 1948, so the Palestinians got used to it being their country, their land, and I get that. It would seem that a two-state solution would be reasonable, but from what I’ve seen in the West Bank, it’s like two different worlds; half the buildings are unfinished and are constructed over the time span of generations possibly, and litter is everywhere. If there were two states, they would be starkly different in ways that would not seem equitable, and in this era of equal results over equal opportunity, that would not be perceived as fair and would not be conducive to a positive peaceful outcome, I fear.
Even if there were two states, it’s not like all of one would be in one place and all the other in the other place because the communities are already so intermixed. It simply wouldn’t happen. As an example, next to every church is a mosque, and I’m not sure which one was first and every day there are the wailing tones from the minarets alternating with the peals of the Angelus bells. I stand there, buffeted by the sounds and know there will never be peace.
I do not think we are any more enlightened, as a race, than we were some millennia ago. We are smarter. Sure, we are, but unless there is a return to the principles and faith of and in the Golden Rule, it will not happen.
